This consists of a special committee that will recommend fast-track legislation to the Congress for a vote. Individual members will be unable to add amendments, filibuster, or otherwise employ their traditional practices aimed at improving the legislation. Moreover, given the adverse consequences entailed in not approving the Super Congress’ proposals, members will likely rubber-stamp its actions. Ron Paul has wisely protested ….

So much for “deliberative body.”

3

Father Gregory Jensen (Orthodox) re-posts thoughts on a Gallup Poll from Matthew Cantirino at First Thoughts. It seems American Muslims are a bit less enthusiastic than others at exalting America over their religion:

[I]t is impossible not to wonder whether … American Muslims … understand something which has been forgotten by the majority of professing Christians and Jews in this country: that allegiance to political authorities (however just or deserving those authorities are) must ultimately be subordinate to allegiance to God and the exigencies of religion.

Amen! Or “Amin,” if you prefer.

4

Religious progressives have been in the forefront of claiming religious sanction for their social activism. So where are they now that intrusive laws — laws impinging on the consciences of faith-based social services — are created with religious exemptions so thin and parsimonious that only core religious worship and prayer are exempt from the laws’ scope?

[R]eligious liberals should be deeply disturbed by the definition of “religious employer” that has been peddled in the contraception-funding context. The definition conflicts with a common, even central, tenet of progressive Christianity: that the message of Jesus is not (or not only) about otherworldly salvation, but is about serving the needy with the love of Christ, often without explicitly preaching, proselytizing, or (in the words of the narrow exemption) “inculat[ing] religious values.” Similarly, liberal Christians frequently affirm the provision of service ecumenically to all persons, again without seeking to get them to “confess Christ” or join the church–in the exemption’s words, “share its tenets”–in order to be recipients of Christian love. If a prominent Christian fundamentalist said that a liberal social service was not Christian or religious because it didn’t explicitly preach or try to convert people, religious liberals would fire back. They should fire back about this exemption language too. Even though the narrow exemption may coincide with the beliefs of many religious progressives on contraception, it rests on premises that utterly undermine religious mission as they understand it.

But Streisand, for all her political shenanigans, was an astonishing interpreter of ballads. Ms. Ambrose, even after shedding the butterflies and improving her intonation as she went along, comes across as tolerably well imitating someone else’s rendition of God Bless the Child?